1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical card connector assembly, and particularly to a stacked electrical card connector assembly for ensuring reliable grounding capabilities thereof. In addition, the assembly features a low-profile structure which benefits reduced space on a printed circuit board (PCB) where the connector assembly is mounted.
2. Description of Prior Art
Most electrical cards and electrical card connectors conform to the standards of PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association). However, as both the requirements on capacity and speed of signal transmission increase, the quality of signal transmission is more vulnerable to electrostatic interference which may adversely affect the quality of signal transmission. To overcome the above-mentioned deficiency, a grounding plate for electrostatic discharge (ESD) is commonly assembled to the electrical card connector for effectively discharging the ESD thereby ensuring reliable signal transmission.
A stacked electrical card connector assembly is disclosed in a co-pending application, Ser. No. 09/421,441, filed on Oct. 19, 1999, assigned to the same assignee as the instant invention, and is incorporated herein for reference. The stacked card connector assembly comprises upper and lower grounding plates respectively attached to upper and lower headers. The lower grounding plate has a plurality of spring fingers downwardly extending into corresponding passageways in a male transition connector to contact corresponding grounding strips in a female transition connector connected with the male transition connector and soldered to grounding pads of a PCB. The upper grounding plate has a plurality of forwardly and downwardly extending spring arms for contacting the lower grounding plate. Thus, a grounding path is established between electrical cards inserted into the stacked electrical card connector assembly and the PCB via the upper and lower grounding plates and the grounding strips in the female transition connector.
However, the length of the male transition connector is significantly increased since one row of the passageways for receiving the spring fingers of the lower grounding plate is defined between two rows of terminal-receiving passageways. Thus, the entire length of the stacked electrical connector assembly is increased which needs more space to accommodate it. In some applications, especially in the notebook computer application, there is no room for the additional length. Furthermore, the spring fingers of the lower grounding plate are soldered to the corresponding grounding strips in the female transition connector to ensure a reliable contact therebetween. Therefore, if the spring fingers are improperly soldered to the corresponding grounding strips, it will be difficult to conduct a remedy and maintenance.
The present invention is directed to provide a low-profile stacked electrical connector assembly which can be used for different applications.